PCI-Express (PCIe) as the successor of the PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) technology is the most widely used means to interconnect CPUs and their peripherals deployed within Personal Computers (PCs) or servers. It is a high throughput, low-latency, packet based and switched interconnection technology.
Multiple PCIe domains, each with its own host, i.e., a micro computer or a CPU, are interconnected by one or multiple PCIe Non-Transparent Bridges (NTB). The NTBs in this configuration are used to perform address translation between address spaces of the PCIe domains they are connected to, thereby allowing data transfer to be performed among nodes (i.e. I/O devices, CPUs, etc.) in separated PCIe domains.
PCIe networks continue to grow in size and complexity. It is expected that a need will arise for resource management across PCIe domains.